The Met today said it was not possible to establish whether the News of the World was responsible for the voicemail deletions that gave the Dowler family false hope their daughter was still alive.

An investigation by the force concluded that because there was only an incomplete set of call data in relation to Milly’s phone “it’s not possible to state with any certainty” of Milly’s voicemails were deleted manually or automatically.

It was one of the central and most shocking allegations made in a Guardian story on 5 July 2010 revealing the paper had hacked Milly's phone, when the paper s stated as fact: "The messages were deleted by journalists in the first few days after Milly's disappearance in order to free up space for more messages. As a result friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive.”

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